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King Borgia’s Dilemma

Once upon a time, in the world’s first global monarchy, the King had a problem. Despite the fact that it was the most technologically advanced Kingdom the world had ever seen, and despite the fact that he was the most powerful man in world history, he was not satisfied. Something was missing despite him having achieved immortality and world domination.

Even though King Borgia had inherited this system, which his ancestors had created thousands of years ago, through his cunning, hard work and wise strategies Borgia had finally done what all his mimetic and genetic ancestors devoted their lives to achieving. The key to the system’s power has always been that it harnessed the best thinkers and scientists — all the way back to Da Vinci working for Cesare Borgia to create the world’s first military tank. And often the system harnessed the brilliant minds of the world without them knowing what their great work went to achieve. The reason for this needed stealth is that over the millennia the geniuses generally would not have put their work in the service of men who sought global domination. Thus the genii were never allowed to know to what end their achievements were aimed. Essentially, King Borgia came from a very long line of Genii Wranglers.

Through an unbroken line of succession, the King’s ancestors built Plato’s ideal state: a highly efficient socio-political system set at achieving whatever the top “Philosopher *King*” deemed to be the most important goals in his lifetime. Over thousands of years of inter-generational efforts, each leader of the Philosopher Kings had inherited the weapons created by the proceeding generation. In turn, each leader would inherit weapons to defend against meteors; to control weather; to create or prevent earthquakes; tsunamis, etc. But more important than these weapons to use against nature, were the weapons created for the manipulation and control of the self of each individual. Thus, King Borgia inherited, perfected and created anew, the ability to control most of the threats that nature and humans had presented him and his kin for thousands of years.

The Borgia’s greatest achievements were technologies that could directly, or indirectly, control humans. These technologies were subtle to most of the unwitting flock and thus the generations of Borgias could manipulate any person each Borgia King chose to aim these weapons upon — and he could do so without the victim being aware of his influence. He could control anyone: be they malicious criminals or rebellious freedom-loving individualists. This later group were considered to be the worst enemies of the Borgias as they philosophically rejected having anyone influence the exercise of their volition. In other words, the freedom-lovers wanted to fully control of their own self.

And now we come to the dilemma: The current Borgia King had assigned his unwitting servants — the genii — with perfecting life extension technologies. Due to their success this King Borgia was hundreds of years old. But what about the quality of his life?

Part 2:

One day King Borgia, his courtiers, jesters, genii, spies, and all of his minions were busily doing what they’d do each day – dominate organisms of all varieties, reshaping all matter to serve the King’s purposes. On this day a very strange creature came up on the radar of one of the King’s top minions. She was an astoundingly beautiful woman, but so were many of the women the King had seen in his hundreds of years of life. However, this woman’s physical beauty was not what caused her to show up on His radar. She came up because The King’s new Quantum computer had been tasked to ferret out the answer to this question: “Who is Public Enemy Number One.” After the King’s top minion — Anton — sounded the alarm that indicated an answer to the question had been found, a meeting was called for all the King’s top minions. The agenda was to have each advisor submit their models, or profiles, of this “Public Enemy Number One” to help King Borgia determine the best way to deal with her threat to his person and his system.

All the King’s advisors, except one, advised the King on ways to destroy the her. The King felt confident that any one of his advisor’s plans would crush his beautiful enemy. So, he set off to deliberate and choose the method of extermination to use on this unusual pest. Being a connoisseur of what he liked to think as justice, he called for the entire collected, lifetime profile of his enemy. In his war room he studied her glamorous photos; read of her background; and studied her explicit philosophy, her sense of life, her personality type, and her world-view.

In the process he discovered that his lovely enemy was the progeny of an old nemesis. The old nemesis was a woman he’d disposed of decades earlier. Her name was Alice and her knick-name was “FluffY” because she was so serious, tenacious, and brilliant. Discovering that the new enemy was just a newer manifestation of “Fluffy” the King felt at ease with his ability to defeat her. No longer alarmed, he informed his servants to get back to work on other projects as the planning of the demise of this daughter of Fluffy could wait. He and his servants went back to more important work. For example, King Borgia and his minions were in the middle of strip-mining Jupiter and building more rings around Saturn — as well as culling the human population now that robots, AI and Quantum computers had come online. So now very few of the totally inefficient, non-genii, human slaves were needed in King Borgia’s Kingdom.

Time passed in the Kingdom and one day Anton — the same minion who originally dealt with the discovery of “Public Enemy Number One”/Fluffy II — realized that Fluffy II had made inroads that were not predicted by the very extensive modeling that had been done of her. Specifically, she’d gotten herself tied in with some of the most valuable men in the Kingdom, some of the genii, and she was influencing them in ways that were not in accord with the King’s agenda. These were men working on the state-of-the-art domination technologies for the masses; otherwise known as metaethics, ethics, morality, dramatized morality, and psychology. So Anton tried to call Fluffy II to the King’s attention once more, but the King was busy with his favorite past-time (which was to engage in sexual activities with very young gorgeous girls (called “birds” in this Kingdom). Anton knew not to disturb the King when a sign was lit above his door that read: “This bed is filled with baby birds.”

So, Anton, together with his closest friend Adolfo, decided on their own, to tag-team this woman into submission. They decided on the manner in which they would deal with her threat to their King. Adolfo convinced Anton that they should pay her a personal visit. As the King was highly appreciative of initiative they thought their initiative would eventually be rewarded. They realized it was risky to visit her in person but thought it necessary because the modeling of Fluffy II had proved to be inadequate at predicting her future threatening activities.

Upon their first meeting, they were surprised to find that she was receptive, friendly, funny, and delightful to be around. She was truly *YAR* (1). But despite their fondness for her they decided to go through with their plan to set up a relationship with her — becoming trusted advisors — so they could then steer her in a certain direction — the direction of roping her into helping them destroy her self. That is, to get her to sacrifice her standards, virtues and core values. This was the normal, and consistently used method for neutralizing all humans and especially enemies of the millennia of Borgia Kingdoms. Thus, armed with the method that had worked for thousands of years, they were confident that they would be able to subdue Fluffy II.

Many months, and then years went by. They felt that progress had been made, but one day something happened which proved they were wrong. Despite getting along very well and being very friendly with Fluffy II, and despite that they had given her some bad advice which she’d taken to her detriment, one day she stopped talking to them completely. She refused to meet them and refused to take their phone calls. Now, this was not totally surprising as they were in the throws of ramping up their efforts to manipulate and sacrifice her. But they didn’t think that she’d noticed; nor that she would react by cutting off all communications; thus cutting off their access to influence her to her demise.

Having once again modeled Fluffy II incorrectly, Anton and Adolfo decided it was time to explain their failure to King Borgia who was still very engrossed in his projects to dominate the universe; plus his favorite pastime. Disheartened, they warned the King of their failure and of her escalation in her efforts to do exactly what the King and his servants feared she’d do: spread to others her methodology, teleology, or morality of objective self-control.

Part 3:

Upon receiving Anton’s and Adolfo’s report, King Borgia realized he’d underestimated Fluffy II. Having an enemy who he could not easily defeat was a new experience for him and he was irritated – but at the same time fascinated by this enemy’s ability to defeat his ancient, time-tested, systems for controlling the self of others. He decided to again have a conference with his top minions, this time at an island retreat. He wanted to brainstorm with them on the best way to gain her participation to destroy her self. Through millennia it was learned by groping trail and error that no matter what weapons were used against a self, so long as that self itself did not participate in its own demise there was nothing that could be done to break that self.

At the retreat power-point presentations were made where the reoccurring theme was that the King must resort to heavy handed tactics to gain the upper hand over his adversary. Anton and Adolfo disagreed. They were the one’s closest to the enemy and most aware of her strengths and weaknesses, and they attested to the futility of a heavy-handed approach. Despite their advise a heavy-handed approach was made to her asserting the King’s domination and control of her. As Anton and Adolfo predicted, the result was a wild ride in a car where Fluffy II spent hours (unsuccessfully) trying to find a method to kill her BODY in order to protect her SELF. A cloud of resignation and despair permeated the retreat. The King and his advisors liked to think of themselves as “The Masters of The Universe” and along most dimensions it was true. Yet, they’d now encountered a problem they didn’t have any means of dealing with – except of course, outright annihilation of the enemy. Yet uncharacteristically, none of them wanted to kill her. This was unusual for these men and this King, as this Kingdom was literally built on the casual and easy use of physical violence whenever anyone opposed a Borgia King’s agendas.

What to do? Having been proved to have the best model of Fluffy II the King asked Anton and Adolfo to council him on their views on how to subdue her. After getting their council The King decided to take matters into his own hands. He ended the retreat and sent his advisors back to their posts to take up the daily maintenance of, and expansion of, His Kingdom.

Still on the island, the King’s servants set up his usual sexual faire with the “Baby Birds” but the King was inexplicably uninterested and told his servants to send the girls away. The King had a personal motto which was “Impulsive by Nature – Deliberative by Choice.” Upon his deliberations, he finally accepted that Fluffy II was a serious problem so his pleasures would have to wait. He knew that if ANY person refused to serve and obey him then it set the worst precedent possible: threatening to undermine his power and thus his entire Kingdom.

On the other hand, he noticed a bit reluctantly, that her intransigence in the face of the subtle, and not so subtle, threats that his minions had made clear to her; and by her ability to detect and outmaneuver his psychological weaponry, he felt truly alive for the first time in over a century. This was the strangest feeling the King had ever known. On the one hand, he was invigorated, alive and hopeful. On the other hand, there had never been a greater threat to his Kingdom which was built on the model of a ship: ONE captain and a strict hierarchy of minions — minions who slavishly obeyed him for the good of the ship and each voyage. He knew he must remain in TOTAL control as he knew himself to be the oldest, wisest, most experienced, most qualified “Philosopher King” to lead this Kingdom. There were still many external threats to the Kingdom that he was convinced only he could stave off. Further, like Plato — and Aristotle and even Fluffy I — King Borgia believed there must be a MERIT SYSTEM where the person most qualified to lead is the King. And indeed he was right: he was the most experienced and competent in achieving human SURVIVAL — BUT WHAT ABOUT HAPPINESS?

In the King’s deliberations he realized that the survival of his system was necessary but he decided to reassess what was the ultimate end that he was aiming his system at? He knew he got his personal need for COMPETENCE met more thoroughly than any man who had ever lived. And he knew that his need for AUTONOMY was satisfied more fully than for any man before him. But what about his need for RELATEDNESS? And in this contemplation he started to realize what his dilemma really was. “What was the point of surviving for a very long time if one is – by the very nature of the system – required to be acutely lonely?” The King deliberated on this question for a long time.

Despite the fact that allowing any other person to have autonomy threatened his system, he decided to find out if there was any chance to keep his system intact and at the same time, not crush Fluffy II’s autonomy. He felt such affection for and camaraderie with her knowing that, were the roles reversed, he would react as she’d reacted to his oppressive system and his efforts to destroy her self — her autonomy.

As the King sat contemplating what to do, Fluffy II appeared on a screen on his wall. He stared at her wondering if there was any way she would ever join him given that his minions had already tried to destroy her self.

Was there now any way to join forces with her? She was already alerted to the King sending in his minions to try to wreck her ego, so now she was on guard and would, naturally, block any attempts to influence her. It had become a “Mexican Stand-off.”

After much deliberation, King Borgia decided to use his latest weapon for control: he would read her mind, not only to get an advantage over her, but he hoped she would have some notion of how to reach a detente between them.

Borgia decided to try to insert his influence on her in ways that she herself held to be advantageous to her ego, or her body. If she thought she should rise early one morning yet was staying up late he’d use his power to cut off her access to the internet or her electrical power so she would have no light to work by. When she thought she should drive slower then he’d use his subtle EMF produced psychological inputs to calm her down when she was driving too fast. His plan was to, like a wild horse, slowly put on the saddle, bit and bridle eventually hoping to get the breastplate attached to her so that he could train her to let him direct and ride her. Throughout the centuries of his life the King had never really attempted such subtle techniques, never finding the specimen worthy of such care. But this time it was different. She made him want to exert this effort at, so far, the only thing he had ever pursued while not having a masterful control of the subject.

King Borgia had always used the technique of unpredictability to his advantage and whenever their engagement was going well, he would, for no apparent reason, inject some small amount of pain, discomfort or disharmony into their discourse. He became so predictable in his “unpredictability” that she began calling him “Whippy the Whipsaw” as she had deciphered the point of this exercise too, being familiar with one of the King’s genii’s work with dogs and Pavlovian training.